Tag Archives: property

Vivienne Westwood is known for her outspoken attitude, both in her fashion and activism. Sticking to trend, today she spoke out about the destruction of long-standing housing co-ops in her home borough of Lambeth, lending her support to the documentary Spectacle are making about thefate of Rectory Gardensand its residents who currently face eviction by the council.

This sort of short-termist policy is “incredibly stupid, shocking and horrible. It’s terrible toput people through that distress” and will simply add to the “growinglist of people waiting for housing”, said Vivienne. In 2011, Lambeth recalled the properties it previously handed over to the self-forming housing co-op back in the 1970s as a response to cuts, spurred on by the now-booming London market. Vivienne spoke with warmth and enthusiasm about Rectory Gardens:“There is no traffic, so children can actually play together and knockon each others’ doors. People are all working together, it’sabsolutely great.” The enforced break-up of such a community is “disgusting”, she added.

Vivienne moved to Clapham in the 1960s, when she recalls that London was a “dilapidated” yet “creative” and “living” city. Echoing the words of artist Maggi Hambling, whoSpectacle interviewed two weeks ago,“There was always something to discover. It was full of craftspeopleand artists”. Now, she says, London has been “cleaned up” and pricedout through short-sighted government policy that is “killing the actualreason why people want to live here in the first place.”

With a deep love of London’s theatres and cultural centres, such as the National Gallery, Barbican, and particularly the Battersea Arts Centre, Vivienneargued that these sorts of enterprises tend to emerge from the ground up,through artistic communities that are allowed to grow organically, like RectoryGardens itself. “These sorts of communities are so important to what makes London such a buzzing, active, cultural place”. But in a world dominated by concern for “profit” alone, in which “people are just treated as commodities”, she fears that all suchcreativity is “being obliterated and swamped”.

Vivienne highlighted the fact that the government is currently planning to buildover 200 high-rise luxury flats in the City; an action she deemed “an absolute scandal”, since, at the same time, “the housing list is growing while council houses arebeing pulled down and housing co-ops arebeing evicted. Where are people going tolive?” Arriving in London almost 50 years ago as a school teacher, Vivienne said that even at that time it was very difficult to find a flat. With her thenboyfriend, Malcolm McLaren, they found a place that had been squattedby “hippies” and painted entirely red on the inside – “it looked likethe inside of a phonebox! It was great!”. This was the only way they were able to secure a home. “I don’t know how people manage today.It’s dreadful.”

“The government is doing only what’s good for business and profit –they’re not thinking about people. Thisis bad economics and is storing up trouble for the future”, argued Vivienne fervently. A long-standing Lambeth resident, she understood that the council was facing enormous pressure from its budget being slashed in half by government austerity measures. But argued that they should be resisting and raisingthe alarm about the scale of cuts, rather thanbacking the Government in “trying to work a system that is a short-term disaster for people and a longer-term, unimaginable disaster forthe planet”. She urged that people should“stick together” to protest against the “false economy” of austerity.

Reflecting her broad activist perspective, Vivienne was keen to stress that the story of Rectory Gardensshould be seen as part of a bigger systemic problem of greedy capitalistprofiteering resulting in the destruction of communities and the environment, “happening everywhere”. “We need a green economy based on collaboration, respectfor people, fair distribution of money, community. A green economy isa people’s economy – it is urgent and necessary. If you protestagainst the acquisition of these co-op houses, you are protestingagainst everything that is ruining the planet.” In her own true-to-form, outspoken words, that is: “a world in which politicians’ only care is to syphon off all profit for the super rich”.